September 2006

While surfing the web one day last fall, I happened upon AE5X's web site. He had put together some photo essays of his QRP backpacking trips. I watched his Adobe Photoshop album, "Camping with the buffalo 2005." I was very impressed with the photography.

One of the images showed the KX1 and accessories in his tent, and I thought QRP operating looked like a fun thing to do while camping. John's trip combined four things I really love: camping, photography, wilderness, and ham radio. I began to wonder if I could try it. But I needed a real light radio.

As much as I loved my K2, I realized that it was too heavy and bulky to be a good backpacking radio.

The Small Wonder SW40+ has a small 3 x 4 inch footprint, has good performance, and is very reasonably priced. There is a radio theory course on the Internet that is based on this kit.

In the winter months of 2006, I began working on the SW40+, and I followed along with the lessons in the Elmer 101 course. I built the SW40+ one section at a time, testing it as I went along.

Now that I had a working lightweight rig, I began to assemble all of my backpacking gear. As I started to pack my 40 meter dipole with its 3 inch PVC center insulator, 14 gauge wire and 50 feet of RG-58, I realized that this was going to be way too heavy for backpacking. What to do?

I had read that if you fed a half-wave wire from the end with a tuner you could eliminate the feed-line and the radiation pattern would be the same as a dipole. Another benefit was that you would also only need one support instead of the two for a dipole. I ordered and assembled a NORCAL BLT tuner kit.

The Black River forest is located in west central Wisconsin about 70 miles northwest of the Wisconsin Dells on I-94. I read about it in the book, "Backpacking Wisconsin."
The Black River forest was rated 3.5 out of 4 stars based on a variety of factors such as scenery, quiet, trails, and solitude. The forest has miles and miles of trails that are specifically for cross country skiing, biking, and hiking.

These well marked and maintained trails run though woodlands and rolling terrain with many scenic overlooks. I called the Black River Falls DNR service center to get a special camp registration permit for Saturday August 26th 2006, and they were kind enough to mail it out to me.

I started my hike on the Red Oak trail around 11:15 am Saturday morning. The sky was overcast with a trace of fog. There were a lot of mushrooms popping up all over, due to heavy rain for the past 3 or 4 days. I hiked about halfway around the 2.5 mile loop and came to an Adirondack shelter.

Just behind the shelter was a mound about 300 feet long and 100 feet high. It was nice and flat on the top, so I made my camp there. There were plenty of sandstone rocks available to tie to the end of my twine.

I chucked a line over a tree limb about 30 feet up and pulled up a 67 foot length of wire. I connected my BLT tuner and Tick keyer to the SW-40+ and heard a number of stations calling in the Ohio QSO party. In 40 minutes, I had made 5 contest QSOs. Happy that my antenna setup was working, I walked down the hill to the shelter and had lunch.

After dinner, I decided to try some more contacts, but only put one QSO in the log that evening. The QRP portion of the band was full of very strong RTTY signals from the SCC RTTY contest. Conditions were poor, with moderate QRN from thunderstorms. I found out later that a C class solar flare had occurred and a mild geomagnetic storm was in progress. That night I built a nice campfire.

Later in the evening I hiked down to the shelter to get a better look at the stars. On the way down the mound, my flashlight disturbed an owl, and it went into a screeching frenzy. He settled down after I turned off the flashlight. When I got to the shelter, I noticed that some bats had taken up residence for the night.

I sat at the picnic table and gazed at the beautiful stars in the Wisconsin night sky. Then I hiked back up to my fire and campsite. I spent the night up on top of the mound. The next morning I had several nice QSOs with other QRPers.

This trip was a learning experience. It's hard to know what to bring and what not to bring. I packed the right amount of water, but too much food. I brought ear-buds to use with my SW40+, but they lacked a volume control.

Since the SW40+ has only a RF gain with no volume and no AGC, some stations were so loud I could not wear the ear-buds. A volume control would have been nice. I used 8 AA alkaline battery pack which held up nicely for 4.5 hours of operation.
I tested out a red LEDs headlamp that worked out just fine for operating at night.

I was quite happy that I didn't see a single bicycle the whole time I was there. In fact, for the 24 hours that I was in the forest, I didn't see or hear anyone. The only evidence of other people was one lone tent up on a ridge on the Wildcat trail. This was a true wilderness experience.

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Pete Bodmer, AA9NF, is an avid QRPer, outdoorsman and photographer living in Naperville, IL.